It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care

I am prone to bouts of jealousy, in romantic situations. I am never irrationally jealous. And my jealousy tends to signify that something's rotten in the state of Denmark. Or is at least a little bit awry.

I have fought it, but I've never been able to kill it completely. It is in my blood. It is my very nature.

So I am letting it be a lesson, or a series of lessons. My jealousy has taught me:

Love won't change a person. I can't date a person's potential. Musicians are trouble. Artists are trouble, also. Dating a player very probably means getting played. No one's vagina is magic.

This one's controversial:

I should not sleep with any man I'm not seriously involved with.

Not on a why-buy-the-cow-if-the-milk-is-free theory, exactly, although -- lord help me -- there may be something to that -- a person can't be "used" for sex if they're not giving it up. Of course, if you're after casual sex, then, by all means, do it. Do it twice, or a hundred times, do it and do it and do it well. Do it until you're dirty, and then take a good long shower.

But if what you want is something else, if casual sex is not what you're after, if it makes you feel sad and empty and dissatisfied, don't do it.

I thought I wanted for most recent man -- this fantastically beautiful man -- to lie on top of me.

And I did. And he did. And it was lovely.

But it turned out that that alone was not what I desired. Or rather, the lying on top of me did not work out because once he drew his body over me, I decided I was after something else. Something more substantial than the weight of a beautiful man's body, draped upon me.

Something he couldn't give, something I probably didn't want from him to begin with.

And all the while, as sexually attractive as he was and is, I knew and know, that what he could give was not enough. It would never satisfy. And that's okay. I got what I wanted, or what I thought I wanted. He is not smart enough, not competent enough, not mature enough; too flaky. And that's okay. I am in all reality too much for him, too verbal, too noisy, too demanding, and that's okay, too. We brought what we had to the table. And the meal is over.

It was what I thought I wanted. And at the time, perhaps it was. But I realized something, in that interaction: no more of that, no more of him. I am not remotely constituted for such things.

If I am going to throw down with a man, I want something different, something truer, something more. And absent that, I will take nothing.